Salleh defends ex-Mahathir loyalists

KUALA LUMPUR – Sept 29, 2016: The latest salvo fired by former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir against those he claimed to have betrayed him, was said to be an indicator of his worry over his crusade against the Barisan Nasional-led government.

The assumption was penned by Communication and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak in response to Dr Mahathir’s accusation that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had “bought over” several of his loyalists.

Among those whom he implicitly claimed to have been paid a wealthy amount of incentives by Najib to criticise him were blogger Zakhir Mohamad of the Big Dog blog and seasoned journalist blogger Datuk Ahirudin Attan of the Rockybru blog.

“They can deny that they have been bought but the people know all too well why they chose to switch their allegiance,” Dr Mahathir wrote in his blog yesterday.

In response to the allegation, Salleh, via his blog, wrote, “Mahathir says these bloggers have been bought. Is he saying all those who support him do so also because they have been bought?

“Mahathir sounds like a very worried person. And he thinks if you do not support him, then you are a crook or have been bought.”

Salleh also claimed that the accused bloggers knew of Dr Mahathir’s plans to make his son, Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir the next Prime Minister but they disagreed with it.

“What needs to be noted is that a few of these bloggers who Mahathir is talking about were actually aligned to Mukhriz and worked very closely with him since 2006.

“Therefore they knew that the plan was to make Mukhriz the Prime Minister. Yet they abandoned Mukhriz in 2015, which says a lot about their confidence level,” Salleh wrote.

He also finds it ironic that Dr Mahathir called everyone who supports Najib “little Goebbels” as such pejorative term was also used to describe his supporters during his tenure as Prime Minister.

“In fact, they also used to refer Mahathir as ‘Hitler’, meaning a megalomaniac leader who accused his number two of sodomy as an excuse to get rid of him.

“It is poetic justice when what was said about Mahathir, he now says the same thing about Najib,” he wrote.

About the author

Zaidi Azmi

Despite becoming The MOLE's journalist in 2014, he still has a hard time traversing the city. If he is not lost, this northern kampung boy can be found struggling to make some sense out of the Malaysian political sphere.